Professor Nilli Lavie, from the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at UCL, hypothesises that this combination of the ability to focus and a susceptibility to distraction might be caused by a higher than normal information processing capacity.

and:

Professor Lavie says: “Our study confirms our hypothesis that people with autism have higher perceptual capacity compared to the typical population. This can only be seen once the task becomes more demanding, with more information to process. In the more challenging task conditions, people with autism are able to perceive significantly more information than the typical adult.”

I wonder, then, how this would also affect those with ADD/HD and if maybe any subtypes would be more akin to autism than not. Distractibility and autism kind of go hand and hand along with hyperfocusing, both of which are also a part of ADD/HD.

As it is, I already believe that the two are too similar to be separate conditions. This just adds to that growing list of reasons why they probably should fall under the same diagnosis, as far as I’m concerned.

But as the article reads, it seems to me that we can extrapolate that ASD children have difficulty processing information because as children, they simply don’t have the higher functioning capabilities (i.e. maturity, age appropriate cognitive skills being too young) as the adults to properly organize that information they receive. Or we could extrapolate that they aren’t being given enough information. I tend to think the latter is probably not correct simply because developmentally, they couldn’t do much with more information anyway but I do think that the prior could be a very real issue. The article does state that while not all ASD children are savants, they are likely to have the same processing ability.

So maybe the processing issues we know ASD children have, stem from a lack of maturity and those processing issues correct as they get older and develop their non-typical skills that help them to process that information the way they do.

Certainly an interesting assertion. Maybe all us parents that are desperately worried about our kids’ processing for no reason (well, no reason might be stretching it but you know what I’m saying). One thing we do know is that MR is not a symptom of ASD so processing disorders are always on the minds of parents of ASD children.

How much longer are we going to pretend the medical community doesn’t have an agenda?

I don’t trust doctors. Some would call me paranoid. Some would say I’m overreacting. I wonder how much longer they’ll be able to hold on to that theory.

Legislators, supposed christians and state leaders, have sent a message. They don’t give a shit what you think. They don’t give a shit about the AMA. They don’t give a shit about ethics. And they sure as hell don’t give a shit if you trust your doctor.

It’s perfectly okay and encouraged to lie to patients.

Do you really believe it stops there?

This touches on many topics. I won’t even touch the religion in politics or the abortion issue as this is an autism blog but understand the entirety of my opinions for all three results in no one ever cares until it happens to them.

Pro-lifers believe abortion should be illegal but would they be okay when it gets to the point of arranged marriages? Not all pro-lifers believe that they shouldn’t be able to use birth control. Not every religious person will be okay with a doctor lying to them or others. Not every religious person will be okay with their bosses asking about their sex life.

How irrational are we now? No one cares until it happens to them. No one cares about our concerns or our children. No one wants to believe that this type of thing could actually happen in this country. The medical community couldn’t really be in the pockets of big pharma or the CDC. Politicians and money can’t really be what’s going on here. We can’t seriously be more concerned with reputations and appearance than the actual health of our children. There couldn’t possibly be an agenda.

Do you care yet?

It’s hard to believe I can still get angry even when I’m not surprised at all.

Just in case some people don’t realize what happens to the parents of special needs kids. This is the reality, folks. Choosing not to be bullied, hurt, lied to, manipulated, or cheated out of helping our kids makes us the bad guys.

It isn’t enough to be ridiculed for standing up for our children. We aren’t allowed to simply love them and do what any parent would do for their children. We have to defend ourselves for it, too.

Chew on why that would be.

Subscribe via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.